"40 Years of Progress?"

"40 Years of Progress?"

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Nov 12 04 11:35 PM

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40 Years of Progress?

by Joel

I am attaching an article below from the January 19, 2004 issue of TIME magazine. It talks about the decline in smoking rates in America
since the original release of the U.S. Surgeon General's report in January of 1964. The author was apparently led to believe that a whole lot more
quitters would be successful if they would just stop trying to go cold turkey and use the many quitting aids available that can "double a
person's chance of success."

One thing I want to comment on is how the article points out that smoking declined from 42% to 23% in the past 40 years, but how the
drop-off stalled in 1990. The dates are interesting.

The article is saying is that there are a whole lot more effective ways to quit than by going cold turkey. It is basically talking about NRT
products and Zyban. What is interesting is that almost all of these products came into widespread use in the 1990's--the years where the rapid
decline in smoking cessation actually stopped.

Nicotine gum was first approved for use in America in 1984, by prescription only. In 1991 and 1992, four patches were approved for
prescription use. In 1996 all controls broke loose--the gum and two of the four patches went over the counter and Zyban was just coming into the
fray.

So now we have all of these miracle products available, many without prescription. If these products were so good at increasing success, and
if they are being used by so many people you would think that smoking rates would be plummeting now when compared to when people just had to rely on
their own resolve to quit.

Again, read the following line from the article below:

"The drop-off in smoking stalled in 1990 and has hardly budged since then."

Lets hope not too many miracle products for smoking cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking
rates.

The real way to once again increase the long-term success rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting
an addiction to nicotine and that to win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and sticking to a commitment to Never Take Another
Puff! Joel

Y O U R T I M E / H E A L T H

Stub Out That Butt!

But don't try to go it alone.
Here are some tricks that make it easier to quit

By CHRISTINE GORMAN
Monday, Jan. 19, 2004

More than 42% of adult Americans smoked when the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was
published. Today, 40 years later, fewer than 23% do. That's good news, but it could be better; a lot better. The drop-off in smoking stalled in
1990 and has hardly budged since then. Surveys show that 70% of tobacco users want to quit, but kicking the nicotine habit isn't
easy.

What a lot of smokers don't realize is that the most popular method of quitting; just stopping, a.k.a. going cold
turkey; is the least effective. Studies show that getting intensive short-term counseling, taking drugs like Zyban (an antidepressant) or using one of
the many nicotine aids (gum, patch, inhaler, nasal spray, lozenge) all double the chance of success. Preliminary results suggest that combining these
methods will increase success rates even more.

The trick is to find out what works best for you. For counseling, you don't have to go into full-fledged
psychoanalysis; you can pick up practical strategies from various quit-smoking telephone hotlines (for a list of numbers as well as tips, visit
smokefree.gov). As for nicotine products, make sure you're using them the right way. You need to chew the gum slowly, for example, not swallowing
the saliva until the nicotine can be absorbed through the cheek, says Dr. Elliot Wineburg, who has used everything from drugs to hypnosis at Mount
Sinai Medical Center in New York City to help hard-core smokers quit. Many people try to make do with as little nicotine as possible, which is a
mistake. "You don't want the brain to go into withdrawal," Wineburg says.

It's never too late to quit. As the years go by, an ex-smoker's risk of heart disease and stroke diminishes
until it's essentially the same as that of a person who has never smoked, says Dr. Corinne Husten of the Centers for Disease Control's Office
on Smoking and Health. Alas, the risk of lung cancer never quite gets down to what it would have been without smoking. "Even with cancer, people
respond better to chemotherapy if they quit," Husten says. Best of all, of course, would be not to take up the habit in the first place.

ATLANTA - Heavily Mormon Utah has become the first and only state to meet the government's goal of reducing the smoking rate to about one
in eight adults, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The overall smoking rate among U.S. adults continues to drop, falling to 22.1 percent in 2003, the according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. That was a decline of just one percentage point from the year before.

"It's a slow decline, but at least it is still is going down," said Dr. Corinne Husten, acting director of the CDC's Office
on Smoking and Health.

But the rate is falling too slowly to meet the government's goal of having a smoking rate of 12 percent or less by 2010, officials
said.

Utah met that goal in 2003 with a smoking rate of 12 percent, Husten said.

Utah's "strong social prohibitions" against smoking among its predominantly Mormon residents have helped, Husten said. She also
cited the state's restaurant smoking bans and moderately high cigarette tax of 69.5 cents a pack.

California had the second-lowest smoking state at nearly 17 percent.

But other states, including tobacco-producing Kentucky, with the nation's highest adult smoking rate, at nearly 31 percent, "have a
long way to go," Husten said.

The U.S. smoking rate has dropped every year since 1998, when more than 24 percent of American adults lit up.

The CDC attributed the drop to such factors as smoking bans, media campaigns against smoking, higher cigarette taxes and insurance coverage
for kick-the-habit programs.

Many people try to make do with as little nicotine as possible, which is a mistake.
"You don't want the brain to go into withdrawal," Wineburg says.

That's just a crazy statement!

So let's see ... I guess that means instead of going through 3 days of physical withdrawal with cold
turkey, what you SHOULD do is just keep on using NRT products ... FOREVER so that your brain NEVER goes into withdrawal.

Crazy!

Been there done that for TOO MANY YEARS!!!!!

Thanks Freedom for the education!!!

Sandy - Free and Healing for Eight Months, Eighteen Days, 6 Hours
and 8 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 10 Days and 22 Hours, by avoiding the use of 3147 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me
$1,272.49.

I thought this would be a good article to bring up considering how NRT got covered in the show yesterday. The slant that the final analysis of the show took
was that if given the choice between smoking or using the gum--the gum wins every time. The problem with this assessment is that it very well left some viewers
thinking that there were only two options for them--smoke or use the gum. There was in fact always the third option, which was not to smoke and not to deliver
nicotine from any source.

I feel it necessary to use that phrase,
"got off nicotine," as opposed to saying, "got off smoking." There are some major experts coming out and
advocating that people should be given nicotine supplements forever to stay off of smoking. Can this work? Of course it can.
If you can give people enough nicotine via supplements it will satisfy their need for nicotine. After all, this is the
primary reason they were smoking at the end--to feed a nicotine addiction. If the smoker can just get nicotine for the rest
of his or her life via another route, he or she will avoid going through the three days of nicotine
withdrawal.

The question needs to be, why should anyone
have to pay what is likely to be tens of thousands of dollars to avoid a few days of withdrawal.? On top of this, these
people will never be totally free of the moderate withdrawals that such usage is likely to keep going. These people will in
fact tout the use of the product as a great aid, but when compared to what people who are totally nicotine free are
experiencing, this victory over cigarettes is just a bit hollow.

The real problem with NRT's though is not even the cost of the fact that they keep people in perpetual state of moderate withdrawal. The problem is that
they very well are undercutting the real chances of long-term success of people who use them. The show is probably correct, that there are not a high
percentage of people who use these products for a long time--although I am suspicious of the percentage they quoted of only one percent.

Again, the real problem is that if people who are all of a sudden motivated to quit start using these products, they are not giving themselves the chance to
really get nicotine free at the time when their motivation to fight may very well be at its highest level. By the time they finish their NRT regiment, their
initial motivation for quitting may be all but forgotten. Then they try to get off the NRT, experience the withdrawals that can accompany the final cessation
of nicotine and without their motivation intact, they end up taking a cigarette and losing the quit.

This article unintentionally illustrates that this phenomena is very likely happening. The fact that the rapid decline in successful quitting leveled off
near the time that the products that give people "the best chance of success" became widely available is likely no coincidence. Before people were
being pushed to use these products by the bulk of the medical and scientific communities we had a greater decline in smoking. This trend speaks volumes and
yet, is not recognized by most who know the trend exists.

As stated above:

So now we have all of these miracle products available,
many without prescription. If these products were so good at increasing success, and if they are being used by so many
people you would think that smoking rates would be plummeting now when compared to when people just had to rely on
their own resolve to quit.

Again, read the following line from the article
below:

"The drop-off in smoking stalled in 1990 and has
hardly budged since then."

Lets hope not too many miracle products for smoking
cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking rates.

The real way to once again increase the long-term success
rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting an addiction to nicotine and that to
win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and sticking to a commitment to Never Take Another Puff!

I deleted an article yesterday posted by a member about an event coming up later this week called "No Smoking Day."

I am going to attach the closing paragraph of that article:

"Smoking bereaves thousands of families every year. And it damages our economy by killing one of our
greatest resources - people.
"But there is also good news. The UK has seen the world's most dramatic decrease in tobacco deaths.
"In part this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

There was one more line in the article referring readers to a site for help in quitting.

If you went to that site and looked up help for quitting you would have been steered right to information about Nicotine Replacement Therapies and how to
use it effectively. I actually didn't bother looking yesterday at the link yesterday for lack of time but just checked it out today to find that out. I
found something else at that site that was more interesting to me though and makes it appropriate to talk about in this string.

Again, the article says, ""In part this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully
doing so."

Kind of gives the impression that more people are succeeding now at quitting than ever. The opening line of the "Help" page states that NRT's,
if used correctly doubles the chances of success.

Now here is a chart that they have on the Facts and Figures page of the referred site:

The highest recorded level of smoking among men was 82% in 1948, when surveys started. Overall prevalence among adults (aged 16 and over) fell
steadily between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, faster among men than women, until there was effectively no difference between the sexes (N. Wald, UK
Smoking Statistics, 1991).

Men

Women

All

1974

51

41

45

1978

45

37

40

1982

38

33

35

1986

35

31

33

1990

31

29

30

1994

28

26

27

1996

29

28

28

1998

28

26

27

2000

29

25

27

2001

28

26

27

2002

27

25

26

A dramatic drop in smoking in men occurred between the years of 1948 to 1982, from 82% to 35%. In America NRT's first became available around 1984, I
think it was available a little earlier in the UK. So here we see a 47 point drop in smoking over that time period. For the 20 years after that 47 point drop
we see a decline from 35% in 1982 to 27% in 2002--a drop of 8 percentage points. Somehow it doesn't appear to me that more people are successfully quitting
now than ever.

Again, I think the chart speaks for itself. The years that NRT's became available by prescription showed a slowing of success and the years where they
became a a heavily used over the counter commodity saw a leveling off of a decline in smoking rates that had been going on for decades.

As I said in the original post in this string:

Lets hope not too many miracle products for smoking
cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking rates.

The real way to once again increase the long-term success
rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting an addiction to nicotine and that to
win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and sticking to a commitment to Never Take Another Puff!

I deleted an article yesterday posted by a member about an event coming up later this week called
"No Smoking Day."

I am going to attach the closing paragraph of that article:

"Smoking bereaves thousands of families
every year. And it damages our economy by killing one of our greatest resources - people.
"But there is also good news. The UK has seen the world's most dramatic decrease in tobacco deaths.
"In part this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

There was one more line in the article referring readers to a site for help in
quitting.

If you went to that site and looked up help for quitting you would have been steered right to
information about Nicotine Replacement Therapies and how to use it effectively. I actually didn't bother looking yesterday at the link yesterday
for lack of time but just checked it out today to find that out. I found something else at that site that was more interesting to me though and makes
it appropriate to talk about in this string.

Again, the article says, ""In part
this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

Kind of gives the impression that more people are succeeding now at quitting than ever. The
opening line of the "Help" page states that NRT's, if used correctly doubles the chances of success.

Now here is a chart that they have on the Facts and Figures page of the referred site:

The highest recorded level of smoking among men was 82% in 1948, when surveys started.
Overall prevalence among adults (aged 16 and over) fell steadily between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, faster among men than women, until
there was effectively no difference between the sexes (N. Wald, UK Smoking Statistics, 1991).

Men

Women

All

1974

51

41

45

1978

45

37

40

1982

38

33

35

1986

35

31

33

1990

31

29

30

1994

28

26

27

1996

29

28

28

1998

28

26

27

2000

29

25

27

2001

28

26

27

2002

27

25

26

A dramatic drop in smoking in men occurred between the years of 1948 to 1982, from 82% to 35%. In
America NRT's first became available around 1984, I think it was available a little earlier in the UK. So here we see a 47 point drop in smoking
over that time period. For the 20 years after that 47 point drop we see a decline from 35% in 1982 to 27% in 2002--a drop of 8 percentage points.
Somehow it doesn't appear to me that more people are successfully quitting now than ever.

Again, I think the chart speaks for itself. The years that NRT's became available by
prescription showed a slowing of success and the years where they became a a heavily used over the counter commodity saw a leveling off of a decline
in smoking rates that had been going on for decades.

As I said in the original post in this string:

Lets hope not too many miracle products for
smoking cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking
rates.

The real way to once again increase the long-term
success rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting an addiction to
nicotine and that to win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and sticking to a
commitment to Never Take Another Puff!

I deleted an article yesterday posted by a member about an event coming up later this week
called "No Smoking Day."

I am going to attach the closing paragraph of that article:

"Smoking bereaves thousands of families
every year. And it damages our economy by killing one of our greatest resources - people.
"But there is also good news. The UK has seen the world's most dramatic decrease in tobacco deaths.
"In part this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

There was one more line in the article referring readers to a site for help in
quitting.

If you went to that site and looked up help for quitting you would have been steered right to
information about Nicotine Replacement Therapies and how to use it effectively. I actually didn't bother looking yesterday at the link
yesterday for lack of time but just checked it out today to find that out. I found something else at that site that was more interesting to me
though and makes it appropriate to talk about in this string.

Again, the article says, ""In part
this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

Kind of gives the impression that more people are succeeding now at quitting than ever. The
opening line of the "Help" page states that NRT's, if used correctly doubles the chances of success.

Now here is a chart that they have on the Facts and Figures page of the referred
site:

The highest recorded level of smoking among men was 82% in 1948, when surveys started.
Overall prevalence among adults (aged 16 and over) fell steadily between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, faster among men than women,
until there was effectively no difference between the sexes (N. Wald, UK Smoking Statistics, 1991).

Men

Women

All

1974

51

41

45

1978

45

37

40

1982

38

33

35

1986

35

31

33

1990

31

29

30

1994

28

26

27

1996

29

28

28

1998

28

26

27

2000

29

25

27

2001

28

26

27

2002

27

25

26

A dramatic drop in smoking in men occurred between the years of 1948 to 1982, from 82% to 35%.
In America NRT's first became available around 1984, I think it was available a little earlier in the UK. So here we see a 47 point drop in
smoking over that time period. For the 20 years after that 47 point drop we see a decline from 35% in 1982 to 27% in 2002--a drop of 8 percentage
points. Somehow it doesn't appear to me that more people are successfully quitting now than ever.

Again, I think the chart speaks for itself. The years that NRT's became available by
prescription showed a slowing of success and the years where they became a a heavily used over the counter commodity saw a leveling off of a
decline in smoking rates that had been going on for decades.

As I said in the original post in this string:

Lets hope not too many miracle products for
smoking cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking
rates.

The real way to once again increase the
long-term success rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting an
addiction to nicotine and that to win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and
sticking to a commitment to Never Take Another Puff!

I deleted an article yesterday posted by a member about an event coming up later this week
called "No Smoking Day."

I am going to attach the closing paragraph of that article:

"Smoking bereaves thousands of families
every year. And it damages our economy by killing one of our greatest resources - people.
"But there is also good news. The UK has seen the world's most dramatic decrease in tobacco deaths.
"In part this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

There was one more line in the article referring readers to a site for help in
quitting.

If you went to that site and looked up help for quitting you would have been steered right to
information about Nicotine Replacement Therapies and how to use it effectively. I actually didn't bother looking yesterday at the link
yesterday for lack of time but just checked it out today to find that out. I found something else at that site that was more interesting to me
though and makes it appropriate to talk about in this string.

Again, the article says, ""In part
this is due to more people wanting to quit and successfully doing so."

Kind of gives the impression that more people are succeeding now at quitting than ever. The
opening line of the "Help" page states that NRT's, if used correctly doubles the chances of success.

Now here is a chart that they have on the Facts and Figures page of the referred
site:

The highest recorded level of smoking among men was 82% in 1948, when surveys started.
Overall prevalence among adults (aged 16 and over) fell steadily between the mid 1970s and the mid 1990s, faster among men than women,
until there was effectively no difference between the sexes (N. Wald, UK Smoking Statistics, 1991).

Men

Women

All

1974

51

41

45

1978

45

37

40

1982

38

33

35

1986

35

31

33

1990

31

29

30

1994

28

26

27

1996

29

28

28

1998

28

26

27

2000

29

25

27

2001

28

26

27

2002

27

25

26

A dramatic drop in smoking in men occurred between the years of 1948 to 1982, from 82% to 35%.
In America NRT's first became available around 1984, I think it was available a little earlier in the UK. So here we see a 47 point drop in
smoking over that time period. For the 20 years after that 47 point drop we see a decline from 35% in 1982 to 27% in 2002--a drop of 8 percentage
points. Somehow it doesn't appear to me that more people are successfully quitting now than ever.

Again, I think the chart speaks for itself. The years that NRT's became available by
prescription showed a slowing of success and the years where they became a a heavily used over the counter commodity saw a leveling off of a
decline in smoking rates that had been going on for decades.

As I said in the original post in this string:

Lets hope not too many miracle products for
smoking cessation get introduced in the future as it may result in skyrocketing smoking
rates.

The real way to once again increase the
long-term success rate of people trying to quit is to help them to understand that they are fighting an
addiction to nicotine and that to win that fight and to stay free forever is as simple as making and
sticking to a commitment to Never Take Another Puff!

Read the below article carefully when thinking about the "experts" stated opinions as to
why the U.S. national cessation rate has stalled. The CDC recently reported that 70% of U.S. smokers want to quit and that 41% made a serious
quitting attempt of at least one day during the past year. The two decade cornor stone of U.S. cessation policy has been replacement nicotine. The
CDC knows that when the 7 over-the-counter patch and gum studies were combined and averaged that 93% of participants were found to have relapsed to
smoking within 6 months. It also knows that the only two studies looking at second time patch use found that nearly 100% relapsed within 6 months
(Tonneson 1993, Gourlay 1995). Worst of all, the CDC knows that NRT studies were not blind as claimed. You'd think that our government would
want to expose flawed science instead of advocating its adoption. This is disheartening. John

The battle against tobacco in the United States appears to have stalled, with the number of adults who smoke cigarettes hitting a plateau after
declining steadily for eight years, federal health officials reported yesterday.

The proportion of adults who smoke held steady at 20.9 percent in the most recent national survey of cigarette habits, conducted in 2005. It was the
first time the rate did not fall from one year to the next since 1997, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported.

The stall coincides with a similar leveling-off in smoking rates among teenagers, suggesting that the steady progress against the leading cause of
preventable death has hit a wall.

Health officials blamed the trend on a combination of factors, including states cutting back on anti-smoking programs, the price of cigarettes rising
more slowly and increased advertising by tobacco companies.

"Cigarette smoking is still the major cause of preventable death in this country," said Ann M. Malarcher of the CDC's Office on Smoking
and Health. "We're not making the progress we need to make in terms of preventing smoking-related illness and death."

The new numbers were met with alarm by public health advocates and anti-smoking activists, who noted that smoking-related illness kills more than
400,000 Americans each year.

"This is very disturbing," said Erika Schlachter of the American Lung Association. "We know what it takes to reduce smoking rates, but
we as a country have not yet done that."

The proportion of adults who smoke had dropped every year since 1997, when the rate was 24.7 percent. But that stopped in 2005, according to the 2005
National Health Interview Survey, which involved face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of 31,428 people age 18 and older. The survey found
that 20.9 percent of adults -- or 45.1 million Americans -- are smokers, which is the same as in 2004, according to a report in the CDC's Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report.

A second report found that smoking rates varied widely around the country, from a high of 28.7 percent in Kentucky to a low of 11.5 percent in Utah.
Locally, the rates were 19 percent in Maryland, 20.6 percent in Virginia and 20.1 percent in the District.

Nationally, men are still more likely to smoke than women -- 23.9 vs. 18.1 percent. American Indians and Alaskan Natives had the highest rate at 32.0
percent, followed by whites (21.9 percent) and blacks (21.5 percent).

One reason for the stall in the decline in smoking is that the amount of money being spent on anti-smoking campaigns has fallen 26.5 percent from 2002
to 2006, the CDC said. States are using money from a landmark $246 billion settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998 for other purposes.

"A lot of the very effective programs got wiped out and cut back," said Joseph DiFranza, a smoking researcher at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. "Now we're seeing the result -- progress we'd been making is getting stalled."

At the same time, tobacco industry spending on advertising and promotional activities, including price cuts, more than doubled, from $6.7 billion in
1998 to $15.1 billion in 2003, the CDC said.

The stall prompted advocates to renew calls for states to spend more money on anti-smoking efforts and for Congress to pass legislation to have the
Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco.

"For the sake of our nation's health, we cannot become complacent about reducing tobacco use," said William V. Corr, executive director
of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington-based advocacy group. "We know what works to reduce smoking among both youths and adults.
What's needed is the political will to implement those proven solutions as aggressively as the tobacco companies continue to market their deadly and
addictive products."

A spokesman said Philip Morris USA has been trying to help smokers quit by providing information about smoking cessation. "We agree with public
health authorities that the best way to reduce the health effects of smoking is to quit or not to smoke in the first place," spokesman Steve
Callahan said.

Separately, the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group, released a poll yesterday that found 45 percent of Americans support making cigarettes
illegal.